Almost immediately she set him down on the closest couch with little grace. Taking him this far had drained as she expected but it was still an unsettling sensation. Before she even thought about answering his question, she leaned against the wall with a deep breath. In and out.
“Outside of Baton Rouge. Close enough to my house but still a bit away. There’s wards up but… I don’t know how much good they’ll do.” Once she felt sure enough on her feet, she moved to sit next to him. “What happened?”
He only thought it weird that he asked such a seemingly irrelevant question after she had deposited him on the couch. Only later did he recognize it was the disorientation of the earth, unfamiliar matter, that unnerved him, but that did not come until later. What came first was deep concern over her loss of balance. HIs fault, very likely. She’d transported them cross-country.
“They’re useless” he mumbled, rubbing at his nape. It felt like a burn, which was strange despite the scars mapping it out–no, this was different. They had grazed him with inky talons but it had healed. His head lolled to the side to look at her, wondering how to piece together what had happened in the past couple hours. “Took them minutes to realize the tattoo’s only on the surface…scratched it. Then they said they would eat me…s'not like any creature I’ve seen they…heal quickly…regenerate. Tried to burn their innards and lop off a limb…both were useless. ‘Twas by chance that I lodged something in their eye they could not remove. They said something about their brains…think 'twas what did it. They just…vanished.”
His voice grew quieter and he picked at a smear of black on his chest, where the fabric of his shirt was torn. “They wanted to know who helped me fool them. They wanted to possess me to find out. Didn’t let them. I can’t let them find ye, Mic. They will come back for me.”
